Mint Data: More Than You Care to Know About Other People’s Spending Habits

The trend of financial over-sharing continues, and I’m glad to have been on the leading edge. I’ve been sharing the details of my finances, including spending habits, since I created Consumerism Commentary in 2003. The idea of social net worth continued with sites like NetWorthIQ, which allowed the public to post family net worth and compare numbers with others.

Mint has since become the most popular way for tracking finances online, and this website has been collecting spending data for some time, analyzing and categorizing each transaction.

Once Mint crossed the million user mark, the data was collected in aggregate to get a better look at the country’s economic condition. Now, with a user base expanded even further, Mint has opened its data vaults to the public with the ability to drill down to the city level. You can now see, for example, the most popular restaurants in New York City (based on number of transactions) or the most expensive clothing shops in San Francisco (based on average purchase price).

The city-based data is interesting for drawing conclusions (or making assumptions) about the most populous areas of the country. Unfortunately, there is only enough data to compare three cities in my state. In New Jersey, the only cities available are Jersey City, Newark, and Trenton. Don’t expect to find data for suburbs like Ewing or Princeton within the Trenton data; it appears to include the city proper only, defined presumably either by zip code of merchant or zip code of Mint user.

Mint Data fulfills a certain financial voyeuristic intention. There is some value in determining whether the amount you spend at McDonald’s every month is more or less than the average New Yorker, but these type of comparisons are generally unsatisfying past the surface. The type of comparison that is more worthwhile is a look at the change over time for an individual or a location, and Mint Data offers this option.

The services produces attractive charts that can be embedded in websites. Here is how spending at Bubba Gump New York, a restaurant apparently inspired by Forrest Gump, has changed over the past few months and how it compares with overall spending on restaurants in the city.

The key to improving your finances is to forget about these comparisons. What does it mean if you spend $200 a month in clothing stores while the average spending in your city is $100? It doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than that. Different people have different financial situations and different needs. None of this is apparent in aggregate comparisons. Without drilling down on the demographics to a very fine level of detail, the only relevant analysis is a comparison with the earlier you.

Very true; although micro-level data is interesting, macro-level will reveal trends that are important to our financial future. Unlike our government Americans have spent less, saved more and paid down debt. Even as we put the last recession behind us, these three thrift-like trends will be important. Should FOMC quantitative easing (money printing) continue and we all begin to face inflationary pressure, good thrift characteristics might ease the strain… or pain… whichever you prefer.

The only problem with the data is you have to make a certain assumption about those that sign up for the service. It isn’t like you have you a clean slate of users – these people had to have been into finances and smart enough to sign up and connect their info.

Very true. Though I would point out that the set of Mint users is now much more mainstream than the set of, say, NetworthIQ users, and thus the data better reflect the general public than any other publicly available data ever has.

I have been using Mint for several years now, and I love looking at how I compare to the “norm” and other people in my city. They rolled out the city comparison about a year ago, but I haven’t checked out individual restaurants or shops! Thanks for the info!

Just read about this a bit earlier on Consumer Reports. Interesting data to go over but nothing too exciting in my opinion. I’m still not sure if people’s personal finance meeting social media is turning out to be a good thing or not…

Note: Use your name or a unique handle, not the name of a website or business. No deep links or business URLs are allowed.
Spam, including promotional linking to a company website, will be deleted. By submitting your comment you are agreeing to these terms and
conditions.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

About Luke Landes

Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. Read more about Luke and about Consumerism Commentary.

Content on Consumerism Commentary is for entertainment purposes only. Rates and offers from advertisers shown on this website may change without notice; please visit referenced sites for current information. Per FTC guidelines, this website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise.

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the savings offers
appearing on this site are from advertisers from which this website receives compensation for being listed here.
This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). These offers do not represent all deposit accounts available.